The Mammoth Book of Best Short SF Novels

by Gardner R. Dozois

  He listened to her breathe for a while. The noise was soft. When she turned her face toward him, he could feel it, a warm little tickle in the hollow of his throat. The smell of her permeated the room. This stranger beside him.

  Gunther felt weary, warm, at ease. “How long have you been here?” he asked. “Not here in the shelter, I mean, but . . .”

  “Five days.”

  “That little.” He smiled. “Welcome to the Moon, Ms. Izmailova.”

  “Ekatarina,” she said sleepily. “Call me Ekatarina.” Whooping, they soared high and south, over Herschel. The Ptolemaeus road bent and doubled below them, winding out of sight, always returning. “This is great!” Hiro crowed. “This is – I should’ve talked you into taking me out here a year ago.”

  Gunther checked his bearings and throttled down, sinking eastward. The other two hoppers, slaved to his own, followed in tight formation. Two days had passed since the flare storm and Gunther, still on mandatory recoup, had promised to guide his friends into the highlands as soon as the surface advisory was dropped. “We’re coming in now. Better triplecheck your safety harnesses. You doing okay back there, Kreesh?”

  “I am quite comfortable, yes.”

  Then they were down on the Seething Bay Company landing pad.

  Hiro was the second down and the first on the surface. He bounded about like a collie off its leash, chasing upslope and down, looking for new vantage points. “I can’t believe I’m here! I work out this way every day, but you know what? This is the first time I’ve actually been out here. Physically, I mean.”

  “Watch your footing,” Gunther warned. “This isn’t like telepresence – if you break a leg, it’ll be up to Krishna and me to carry you out.”

  “I trust you. Man, anybody who can get caught out in a flare storm, and end up nailing—”

  “Hey, watch your language, okay?”

  “Everybody’s heard the story. I mean, we all thought you were dead, and then they found the two of you asleep. They’ll be talking about it a hundred years from now.” Hiro was practically choking on his laughter. “You’re a legend!”

  “Just give it a rest.” To change the subject, Gunther said, “I can’t believe you want to take a photo of this mess.” The Seething Bay operation was a strip mine. Robot bulldozers scooped up the regolith and fed it to a processing plant that rested on enormous skids. They were after the thorium here, and the output was small enough that it could be transported to the breeder reactor by hopper. There was no need for a railgun and the tailings were piled in artificial mountains in the wake of the factory.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Hiro swept an arm southward, toward Ptolemaeus. “There!” The crater wall caught the sun, while the lowest parts of the surrounding land were still in shadow. The gentle slopes seemed to tower; the crater itself was a cathedral, blazing white.

  “Where is your camera?” Krishna asked.

  “Don’t need one. I’ll just take the data down on my helmet.”

  “I’m not too clear on this mosaic project of yours,” Gunther said. “Explain to me one more time how it’s supposed to work.”

  “Anya came up with it. She’s renting an assembler to cut hexagonal floor tiles in black, white and fourteen intermediate shades of grey. I provide the pictures. We choose the one we like best, scan it in black and white, screen for values of intensity, and then have the assembler lay the floor, one tile per pixel. It’ll look great – come by tomorrow and see.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  Chattering like a squirrel, Hiro led them away from the edge of the mine. They bounded westward, across the slope.

  Krishna’s voice came over Gunther’s trance chip. It was an old ground-rat trick. The chips had an effective transmission radius of fifteen yards – you could turn off the radio and talk chip-to-chip, if you were close enough. “You sound troubled, my friend.”

  He listened for a second carrier tone, heard nothing. Hiro was out of range. “It’s Izmailova. I sort of—”

  “Fell in love with her.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  They were spaced out across the rising slope, Hiro in the lead. For a time neither spoke. There was a calm, confidential quality to that shared silence, like the anonymous stillness of the confessional. “Please don’t take this wrong,” Krishna said.

  “Take what wrong?”

  “Gunther, if you take two sexually compatible people, place them in close proximity, isolate them and scare the hell out of them, they will fall in love. That’s a given. It’s a survival mechanism, something that was wired into your basic makeup long before you were born. When billions of years of evolution say it’s bonding time, your brain doesn’t have much choice but to obey.”

  “Hey, come on over here!” Hiro cried over the radio. “You’ve got to see this.”

  “We’re coming,” Gunther said. Then, over his chip, “You make me out to be one of Sally Chang’s machines.”

  “In some ways we are machines. That’s not so bad. We feel thirsty when we need water, adrenalin pumps into the bloodstream when we need an extra boost of aggressive energy. You can’t fight your own nature. What would be the point of it?”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “Is this great or what?” Hiro was clambering over a boulder field. “It just goes on and on. And look up there!” Upslope, they saw that what they were climbing over was the spillage from a narrow cleft entirely filled with boulders. They were huge, as big as hoppers, some of them large as prefab oxysheds. “Hey, Krishna, I been meaning to ask you – just what is it that you do out there at the Center?”

  “I can’t talk about it.”

  “Aw, come on.” Hiro lifted a rock the size of his head to his shoulder and shoved it away, like a shot-putter. The rock soared slowly, landed far downslope in a white explosion of dust. “You’re among friends here. You can trust us.”

  Krishna shook his head. Sunlight flashed from the visor. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  Hiro hoisted a second rock, bigger than the first. Gunther knew him in this mood, nasty-faced and grinning. “My point exactly. The two of us know zip about neurobiology. You could spend the next ten hours lecturing us, and we couldn’t catch enough to compromise security.” Another burst of dust.

  “You don’t understand. The Center for Self-Replicating Technologies is here for a reason. The lab work could be done back on Earth for a fraction of what a lunar facility costs. Our sponsors only move projects here that they’re genuinely afraid of.”

  “So what can you tell us about? Just the open stuff, the video magazine stuff. Nothing secret.”

  “Well . . . okay.” Now it was Krishna’s turn. He picked up a small rock, wound up like a baseball player and threw. It dwindled and disappeared in the distance. A puff of white sprouted from the surface. “You know Sally Chang? She has just finished mapping the neurotransmitter functions.”

  They waited. When Krishna added nothing further, Hiro dryly said, “Wow.”

  “Details, Kreesh. Some of us aren’t so fast to see the universe in a grain of sand as you are.”

  “It should be obvious. We’ve had a complete genetic map of the brain for almost a decade. Now add to that Sally Chang’s chemical map, and it’s analogous to being given the keys to the library. No, better than that. Imagine that you’ve spent your entire life within an enormous library filled with books in a language you neither read nor speak, and that you’ve just found the dictionary and a picture reader.”

  “So what are you saying? That we’ll have complete understanding of how the brain operates?”

  “We’ll have complete control over how the brain operates. With chemical therapy, it will be possible to make anyone think or feel anything we want. We will have an immediate cure for all nontraumatic mental illness. We’ll be able to fine-tune aggression, passion, creativity – bring them up, damp them down, it’ll be all the same. You can see why our sponsors are so afraid of what our research might prod
uce.”

  “Not really, no. The world could use more sanity,” Gunther said.

  “I agree. But who defines sanity? Many governments consider political dissent grounds for mental incarceration. This would open the doors of the brain, allowing it to be examined from the outside. For the first time, it would be possible to discover unexpressed rebellion. Modes of thought could be outlawed. The potential for abuse is not inconsiderable.

  “Consider also the military applications. This knowledge combined with some of the new nanoweaponry might produce a berserker gas, allowing you to turn the enemy’s armies upon their own populace. Or, easier, to throw them into a psychotic frenzy and let them turn on themselves. Cities could be pacified by rendering the citizenry catatonic. A secondary, internal reality could then be created, allowing the conqueror to use the masses as slave labor. The possibilities are endless.”

  They digested this in silence. At last Hiro said, “Jeeze, Krishna, if that’s the open goods, what the hell kind of stuff do you have to hide?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  A minute later, Hiro was haring off again. At the foot of a nearby hill he found an immense boulder standing atilt on its small end. He danced about, trying to get good shots past it without catching his own footprints in them.

  “So what’s the problem?” Krishna said over his chip.

  “The problem is, I can’t arrange to see her. Ekatarina. I’ve left messages, but she won’t answer them. And you know how it is in Bootstrap – it takes a real effort to avoid somebody who wants to see you. But she’s managed it.”

  Krishna said nothing.

  “All I want to know is, just what’s going on here?”

  “She’s avoiding you.”

  “But why? I fell in love and she didn’t, is that what you’re telling me? I mean, is that a crock or what?”

  “Without hearing her side of the story, I can’t really say how she feels. But the odds are excellent she fell every bit as hard as you did. The difference is that you think it’s a good idea, and she doesn’t. So of course she’s avoiding you. Contact would just make it more difficult for her to master her feelings for you.”

  “Shit!”

  An unexpected touch of wryness entered Krishna’s voice. “What do you want? A minute ago you were complaining that Sally Chang thinks you’re a machine. Now you’re unhappy that Izmailova thinks she’s not.”

  “Hey, you guys! Come over here. I’ve found the perfect shot. You’ve got to see this.”

  They turned to see Hiro waving at them from the hilltop. “I thought you were leaving,” Gunther grumbled. “You said you were sick of the Moon, and going away and never coming back. So how come you’re upgrading your digs all of a sudden?”

  “That was yesterday! Today, I’m a pioneer, a builder of worlds, a founder of dynasties!”

  “This is getting tedious. What does it take to get a straight answer out of you?”

  Hiro bounded high and struck a pose, arms wide and a little ridiculous. He staggered a bit on landing. “Anya and I are getting married!”

  Gunther and Krishna looked at each other, blank visor to blank visor. Forcing enthusiasm into his voice, Gunther said, “Hey, no shit? Really! Congratu—”

  A scream of static howled up from nowhere. Gunther winced and cut down the gain. “My stupid radio is—”

  One of the other two – they had moved together and he couldn’t tell them apart at this distance – was pointing upward. Gunther tilted back his head, to look at the Earth. For a second he wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Then he saw it: a diamond pinprick of light in the middle of the night. It was like a small, bright hole in reality, somewhere in continental Asia. “What the hell is that?” he asked.

  Softly, Hiro said, “I think it’s Vladivostok.”

  By the time they were back over the Sinus Medii, that first light had reddened and faded away, and two more had blossomed. The news jockey at the Observatory was working overtime splicing together reports from the major news feeds into a montage of rumor and fear. The radio was full of talk about hits on Seoul and Buenos Aires. Those seemed certain. Strikes against Panama, Iraq, Denver and Cairo were disputed. A stealth missile had flown low over Hokkaido and been deflected into the Sea of Japan. The Swiss Orbitals had lost some factories to fragmentation satellites. There was no agreement as to the source aggressor, and though most suspicions trended in one direction, Tokyo denied everything.

  Gunther was most impressed by the sound feed from a British video essayist, who said that it did not matter who had fired the first shot, or why. “Who shall we blame? The Southern Alliance, Tokyo, General Kim, or possibly some Grey terrorist group that nobody has ever heard of before? In a world whose weapons were wired to hair triggers, the question is irrelevant. When the first device exploded, it activated autonomous programs which launched what is officially labeled ‘a measured response.’ Gorshov himself could not have prevented it. His tactical programs chose this week’s three most likely aggressors – at least two of which were certainly innocent – and launched a response. Human beings had no say over it.

  “Those three nations in turn had their own reflexive ‘measured responses.’ The results of which we are just beginning to learn. Now we will pause for five days, while all concerned parties negotiate. How do we know this? Abstracts of all major defense programs are available on any public data net. They are no secret. Openness is in fact what deterrence is all about.

  “We have five days to avert a war that literally nobody wants. The question is, in five days can the military and political powers seize control of their own defense programming? Will they? Given the pain and anger involved, the traditional hatreds, national chauvinism, and the natural reactions of those who number loved ones among the already dead, can those in charge overcome their own natures in time to pull back from final and total war? Our best informed guess is no. No, they cannot.

  “Good night, and may God have mercy on us all.”

  They flew northward in silence. Even when the broadcast cut off in mid-word, nobody spoke. It was the end of the world, and there was nothing they could say that did not shrink to insignificance before that fact. They simply headed home.

  The land about Bootstrap was dotted with graffiti, great block letters traced out in boulders: KARL OPS – EINDHOVEN ’49 and LOUISE MCTIGHE ALBUQUERQUE N.M. An enormous eye in a pyramid. ARSENAL WORLD RUGBY CHAMPS with a crown over it. CORNPONE. Pi Lambda Phi. MOTORHEADS. A giant with a club. Coming down over them, Gunther reflected that they all referred to places and things in the world overhead, not a one of them indigenous to the Moon. What had always seemed pointless now struck him as unspeakably sad.

  It was only a short walk from the hopper pad to the vacuum garage. They didn’t bother to summon a jitney.

  The garage seemed strangely unfamiliar to Gunther now, though he had passed through it a thousand times. It seemed to float in its own mystery, as if everything had been removed and replaced by its exact double, rendering it different and somehow unknowable. Row upon row of parked vehicles were slanted by type within painted lines. Ceiling lights strained to reach the floor, and could not.

  “Boy, is this place still!” Hiro’s voice seemed unnaturally loud.

  It was true. In all the cavernous reaches of the garage, not a single remote or robot service unit stirred. Not so much as a pressure leak sniffer moved.

  “Must be because of the news,” Gunther muttered. He found he was not ready to speak of the war directly. To the back of the garage, five airlocks stood all in a row. Above them a warm, yellow strip of window shone in the rock. In the room beyond, he could see the overseer moving about.

  Hiro waved an arm, and the small figure within leaned forward to wave back. They trudged to the nearest lock and waited.

  Nothing happened.

  After a few minutes, they stepped back and away from the lock to peer up through the window. The overseer was still there, moving unhurriedly. “Hey!” Hiro shouted over o
pen frequency. “You up there! Are you on the job?”

  The man smiled, nodded and waved again.

  “Then open the goddamned door!” Hiro strode forward, and with a final, nodding wave, the overseer bent over his controls.

  “Uh, Hiro,” Gunther said, “There’s something odd about . . .”

  The door exploded open.

  It slammed open so hard and fast the door was half torn off its hinges. The air within blasted out like a charge from a cannon. For a moment the garage was filled with loose tools, parts of vacuum suits and shreds of cloth. A wrench struck Gunther a glancing blow on his arm, spinning him around and knocking him to the floor.

  He stared up in shock. Bits and pieces of things hung suspended for a long, surreal instant. Then, the air fled, they began to slowly shower down. He got up awkwardly, massaging his arm through the suit. “Hiro, are you all right? Kreesh?”

  “Oh my God,” Krishna said.

  Gunther spun around. He saw Krishna crouched in the shadow of a flatbed, over something that could not possibly be Hiro, because it bent the wrong way. He walked through shimmering unreality and knelt beside Krishna. He stared down at Hiro’s corpse.

  Hiro had been standing directly before the door when the overseer opened the door without depressurizing the corridor within first. He had caught the blast straight on. It had lifted him and smashed him against the side of a flatbed, snapping his spine and shattering his helmet visor with the backlash. He must have died instantaneously.

  “Who’s there?” a woman said.

  A jitney had entered the garage without Gunther’s noticing it. He looked up in time to see a second enter, and then a third. People began piling out. Soon there were some twenty individuals advancing across the garage. They broke into two groups. One headed straight toward the locks and the smaller group advanced on Gunther and his friends. It looked for all the world like a military operation. “Who’s there?” the woman repeated.

  Gunther lifted his friend’s corpse in his arms and stood. “It’s Hiro,” he said flatly. “Hiro.”